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More charges and countercharges over what's to blame for an increase in the time it takes for firefighters to get to a fire. On Tuesday, the fire commissioner reacted to NY1's exclusive report on the increase. NY1's Amanda Farinacci has the latest.
On Monday we told you about the FDNY's new way of calculating the time it takes for units to respond to a fire. The department expected the change to result in a lower average time.
Instead, the new data shows it took firefighters anywhere between five and 13 seconds longer to respond to fires during July, August and September of this year, compared to the same months in 2002.
Tuesday, we asked Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta about the increase.
"Response times are slightly up by a handful, a matter of seconds," said Scoppetta. "In some places, they're not up at all -- in Brooklyn they've not increased at all."
Even if the increase is slight, the question remains: Why?
Union officials blame six closed firehouses. The department says it's because the unions have been telling members to slow down on their way to fires.
Union leaders say they started doing that after a firefighter was brought up on departmental charges when the truck he was driving was in an accident that killed a civilian in July.
"When you proceed without stopping at a red light or at a stop sign, you are violating department regulations, and if you do that, and have an accident, the Fire Department will prefer charges against you for doing it [even if you have the sirens on]," said Peter Gorman of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.
The fire commissioner says the department is set to change its traffic regulations to conform to the vehicle and traffic law for emergency vehicles. That law says that responding units won't have to stop at every red light, but rather use due caution before proceeding:
"Stop if you must, but if you can get through, that just means slow down so that you can stop if you have to and I think that will deal with that issue," said Scoppetta.
But the firefighters union says it's just one more attempt by the department to blame accidents on drivers or chauffeurs so that the city can claim it's not responsible.
"If you read the text of their new regulations, they're gonna continue to prosecute chauffeurs if they get into an accident," said UFA President Stephen Cassidy. "So as the president of this union, my message to firefighters is that this department has a history of going after people who continue to put their lives on the line and I am going to ask my chauffeurs to obey all the regulations and my attorneys are looking at their new procedures. We may actually ask our chauffeurs to stop at red lights and stay there until the officer tells them it's safe to go."
The fire commissioner says the change is intended to make it easier for units to get around the city, and to protect firefighters and the public and in spite of the new numbers, he doesn't think fire response times will suffer.
– Amanda Farinacci
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